This week's major crisis was that the department's Assistant Chair has decided to resign as of this coming fall. This is a tricky topic to blog about because this has a big impact on my job as chair, but the personal issues related to the topic are something I feel I probably should not go into. So it's a private versus public issue that impacts what can or can't be written about as a chair who is blogging.
Of course, it should not be surprising to anyone that being a departmental administrator is stressful. You have little power as a chair. You can't make people do much. You can encourage them to do things. But you can't fire them or cut their pay if they mess up. This is also a blessing, actually. If I had to fire people, I don't think I ever would have taken on the chair's job. My brother is an insurance vice president and he's had to do a lot of firing of people. I could always hear a lot of pain in his voice talking about that; I think it weighed very heavily on his mind and was nothing he was happy to live with. But sometimes he felt forced to make those difficult choices. That's nothing I would want.
I do have control of people's schedules, but if I were to mess with that and give people schedules they dislike, then I would surely create ill will in the department and make a lot of people miserable. My sense from working on the schedule is that it is faculty members' schedules which seem to impact their mental health. So if you mess with their schedules too much or are too cruel in scheduling, people will feel totally overwhelmed. Again, that's nothing I would want to do.
All of this leads to administrative work often being about helping people with little things they want, like teaching on a given day, but also putting you in the role of the bad guy often. So I have to be the one to say, this class has weak enrollments and it must be canceled. It's the dean who makes that call, but I have to deliver the news people don't want to hear.
Well I guess in this entry I've written more about chair issues than assistant chair issues. That's probably just as well. This is supposed to be a blog about chairing and that is challenge enough.
Of course, it should not be surprising to anyone that being a departmental administrator is stressful. You have little power as a chair. You can't make people do much. You can encourage them to do things. But you can't fire them or cut their pay if they mess up. This is also a blessing, actually. If I had to fire people, I don't think I ever would have taken on the chair's job. My brother is an insurance vice president and he's had to do a lot of firing of people. I could always hear a lot of pain in his voice talking about that; I think it weighed very heavily on his mind and was nothing he was happy to live with. But sometimes he felt forced to make those difficult choices. That's nothing I would want.
I do have control of people's schedules, but if I were to mess with that and give people schedules they dislike, then I would surely create ill will in the department and make a lot of people miserable. My sense from working on the schedule is that it is faculty members' schedules which seem to impact their mental health. So if you mess with their schedules too much or are too cruel in scheduling, people will feel totally overwhelmed. Again, that's nothing I would want to do.
All of this leads to administrative work often being about helping people with little things they want, like teaching on a given day, but also putting you in the role of the bad guy often. So I have to be the one to say, this class has weak enrollments and it must be canceled. It's the dean who makes that call, but I have to deliver the news people don't want to hear.
Well I guess in this entry I've written more about chair issues than assistant chair issues. That's probably just as well. This is supposed to be a blog about chairing and that is challenge enough.